Campaign of the Month:
January 2012

Star Trek Late Night

Matt's Personal Log - Episode 40

We have finally arrived – well, almost. After leaving Quo’nos, it was a short hop to the Gren-ga Tharg system. If I was into scavenging, that place’d be heaven. I should probably tell Arnie about it, but I don’t even know how he’d get there, let alone get anything his crew managed to find back to Citadel. Still, if I don’t at least tell him about it and he finds out another way, I’ll probably never hear the end of it.

We did a little scavenging ourselves while we there – Karr and Alyr were on the verge of being totally distracted by the whole thing, but I was gonna leave without them if they had wanted to stay. I really don’t know if that’s why they moved on with me, or if perhaps the actual spirit of adventure and discovery is catching up to them at last – only time will tell. Karr was particularly interested in an Imperial single-man ship for some reason; I’d forgotten he even had a bay for it on the Knife, and I still can’t figure out what he needs it for. All the same, I figure we can swing by on the way back and see if it’s still there later; I have to admit I was feeling a tad bit impatient about getting on to the Ring.

The actual search for the Ringworld itself took far less time than I had expected it to. Alyr had a good idea: basically, he concluded that any non-natural object of that size would need a working maintenance system – even an automated one – and that would require a good system of communication. He scanned the comms for peak usage while my team scanned for systems with no planetary bodies (as any system with a ringworld would most likely have been cleared of such potential hazards). When our two search grids matched, we focused on those systems and found the prize in short order – as verified by the presence of the Puppeteers I’d been told about.

The Puppeteers are awe-inspiring, even with the fact that I have yet to set eyes on one. The suspicions I’ve been harboring that they might be the mythic Iconians have just gotten stronger – you see, the Puppeteers don’t travel by ship, they traverse the stars on five planets in a Klemperer’s Rosette – each body spaced equidistant from one another and orbiting a common center of gravity. Such a feat of engineering is astounding, and one that I can scarcely comprehend even though the mathematics of it are simple, really. I’m certain that they could engineer a ringworld if they so desired.

And yet, according to all the sources I was able to meet with, they are just as curious regarding this artifact as I am; that would seem to indicate that they are not, in fact, the makers of the ringworld. As we approached the system they moved to intercept us, but we bypassed them by way of a short jump. Now we are within a few scant lightyears from our destination. Of all the wonders this Earth man has seen since arriving in this century, I believe that this world may hold even greater wonders still!